Hot metallurgical coke pushed from slot type coke ovens is usually immediately quenched by spraying it with a large volume of water. The hot coke from the ovens is conveyed on a quenching car to a spray quenching station where the car and its contents are drenched with water by spraying water over the whole surface of the coke until it is quenched. This method often results in excessive quenching of some areas and leaves up to 20% moisture in the cold porous coke.
It is very desirable to have the moisture level in coke within the range of 2-4%. At levels below 2% the coke tends to form a powdery dust in handling and at moisture levels above about 4%, the transportation costs due to shipping the excessive water are quite high. The most important disadvantage, however, with the heretofore employed quenching methods is that the variability of moisture in coke increases as the average moisture content increases so that one gets erratic blast furnace performance from the use of the coke as the exact amount of carbon is difficult to calculate.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a method of quenching coke which will reduce the moisture content to an acceptable level below that obtainable by conventional quenching methods and to obtain more uniform moisture content at the low level. A further object of this invention is to provide a method of reducing the time required to quench the coke in car load quantities. Another object of this invention is to reduce the amount of water required to quench a coke load and thereby decrease the amount of water being discharged to the atmosphere.